Earticle

The development of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) is of great interest to language and language policy researchers in an era of globalization and internationalization. Despite recognition of a number of implementational problems and constraints, EMI has been widely introduced into various non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. The question of what challenges face stakeholders in the implementation of EMI was our major focus in a two-year project that investigated a new EMI undergraduate program in Vietnam. Selected findings from the study’s interview component reveal that lecturers were challenged by their own language abilities, students’ language competence and learning styles, pedagogical issues, and resource availability. Based on these findings, suggestions are made for enhancing the success of similar programs.

For this study a new memory-based vocabulary strategic learning framework was constructed involving four essential stages for vocabulary learning which can be translated into four corresponding strategy-driven processes that execute learning actions. A questionnaire study was conducted with Chinese university EFL learners who shared a similar background and learning context at the macro level, guided by four research questions: (1) can the memory-based strategic vocabulary learning framework be employed to classify learners’ vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) satisfactorily?, (2) what strategies do Chinese university students use for learning vocabulary items?, (3) what are the learner clusters among Chinese university students regarding their use of VLS?, and (4) how are learners’ vocabulary learning approaches related to their language achievement? It is found that learners’ VLS use is very contextualised and subject to change due to many factors. A micro language-rich environment, where there is out of class reading and meaningful social interaction, is a key to high vocabulary achievement in an EFL context. The cluster analysis revealed a non-linear, complicated relationship between VLS use and vocabulary learning success. In addition, gender has a prominent impact on VLS use; however, the impact of learners’ discipline on VLS use is unclear and needs further investigation.

The present study investigates the use of lexical bundles in Korean EFL teacher talk. In particular, it examines the quantitative and qualitative features of lexical bundles in a native and non-native teachers’ classroom talk corpus. The corpus of the study consists of a total of 247,398 words complied through 62 hours of recording of EFL classes. The key lexical bundles of the study were extracted using WordSmith 6.0 to conduct frequency, functional and structural analyses. The results of the frequency analysis showed the non-native English teachers’ repeated use of a limited number of lexical bundles which inflated the total number of usages. The functional analysis of the lexical bundles showed that the non-native English teachers relied heavily on a narrow range of functional categories, e.g., stance expressions and referential expressions. Further, the results of the functional analysis clearly indicate that the EFL teacher corpus possesses certain repetitive tendencies in both conversational and academic discourse. The examination of the over-, exclusive, and under-use of lexical bundles demonstrates that not only quantitative but also qualitative differences exist in lexical bundle preferences between the native and the nonnative teachers.

Group work has become ubiquitous in general education and within language teaching, but having decided to use groups in the classroom the teacher is faced with a number of decisions, including composition, longevity, and level of freedom given to students in selecting group members. Although there is a limited body of literature in general educational research discussing these issues (Bacon, Stewart, & Silver, 1999), there is no empirical research in SLA addressing this. This article describes a study conducted over one academic year, with students in compulsory English classes in a private university in Japan. Students experienced random group construction, self-selection into groups, and also groups working together for a single week, and for an entire 14-week semester. Interviews and questionnaires were used to determine preferences for group formation and longevity and to discover students' reasons for selecting group members. Results suggest that students have mixed views, but generally prefer selecting their own groups, and also changing groups at some point during a single semester. Students select group members based on friendship. Although studying with friends leads to smooth conversation, there is the possibility of increased social loafing. The implications for teachers are discussed.

This study investigates the differences between advanced and intermediate readers, focusing on the reading process of Japanese EFL students at the university level. A reading test was conducted among English learners with advanced and intermediate reading skills, with three people in each respective group. Subsequently, interviews were held to determine how the participants had read the English texts. The results of a qualitative analysis of this interview data revealed three differences between the reading processes of the advanced and intermediate readers. The first difference concerned vocabulary size (larger in the advanced group), while the second concerned their knowledge of syntactic structures: the advanced group was sufficiently knowledgeable about sentence structures to understand the material, but the intermediate group was not, and therefore sometimes made mistakes in understanding the sentences. The third difference involved automaticity: the advanced group was able to carry out lower-level reading processing nearly automatically, while the intermediate group could not. These findings indicate that to improve reading skills, it is not only necessary to increase vocabulary size, but to also build up learners’ knowledge of sentence structures.